A VOICE of BALTIMORE POLITICAL COMMENTARY

 

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon told “Meet the Press” on Sunday that simply having been a CEO is “not sufficient” to make a candidate an effective
President.  Dimon also declined to say whether he would support Hillary Clinton again as he did in
2008 when she ran against Barack Obama, or even if he thought she would make a good President.

THE ELECTORATE APPEARS POISED
TO ACCEPT A WOMAN PRESIDENT—
BUT WHICH WOMAN MIGHT IT BE?

Bill Clinton without the charm

THE DONALD AND THE DOCTOR:
RIGHT MESSAGE, WRONG MESSENGER
 
By Alan Z. Forman
 
An American woman President is an idea whose time has come.

But only two are actually “running”:  a front-runner and an also-ran.

There is also an unmistakable national appetite for a political “outsider”:  Is Donald Trump the man?

Or possibly Ben Carson?  Can a pediatric neuro- surgeon new to politics become the leader of the Free World?

Voice of Baltimore believes that none of the current front-runners (or also-rans) is suited or well-
qualified for the job.

Though their message may be right, the messengers are wrong.

Hillary Rodham Clinton proves it every day:  She can’t be trusted, can’t seem to tell the truth, can’t even come clean with her own supporters, those who love her most.

What’s the point of denying, obfuscating and stonewalling with regard to a bunch of stupid personal emails? She should have reserved the negativity for all those classified messages she illegally sent using her private server when she was Secretary of State.

“The truth” to Hillary is whatever she tells the country to believe it is.

Not only that, she seems remarkably incapable of getting her campaign act together. Her political machine, more than a decade in the making, repeatedly falters and stumbles as if being run by amateurs.

Do we want a woman President who acts and thinks like that? (Or a man either?)

Or Carly Fiorina?  Despite her celebrated performance in the first two GOP debates the former Cara Carleton Sneed is still at bottom-line a failed corporate executive and senatorial loser.

Baltimorean Ben Carson has a stellar reputation as a pediatric neurosurgeon but lacks experience as a politician.

And what about The Donald? Do we want a man who will insult the President of Russia even more than Barack Obama has done?

Or a retired Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon with a stellar medical reputation — but no experience whatsoever in politics, not even at the local level.

To be sure, the former First Lady has a unique political record: She has been a President’s wife, a United States Senator from a state where many still consider her a carpetbagger, and a leading Cabinet Secretary with a mixed record of accomplishment.

Like Robert Kennedy in the 1960s she never lived in New York or ever held elective office until she ran and was elected there, to represent the Empire State in the U.S. Senate.

Like Kennedy, she parlayed a family connection into a position of political power. Without Bill, where would Hillary be today?

She is her husband without the charm and political acumen, an arrogant cold fish who expects America to believe that she’s “entitled” to the job.

No matter what she says or does, she demands that the country accept it — blindly and without question.

Does she take us all for fools?

Unlike her husband, she and her campaign confidantes can’t seem to learn from their mistakes.  Nor do they appear capable of recognizing that she has no chance of winning without maintaining a close connection to Bill; yet her campaign repeatedly shuns the former President — and his sage advice — at every turn.

Why would a candidate for President ignore the recommendations and assistance of the most astute political leader of our time?

Hillary’s acting now the way she did in 1993 when her arrogance sank universal health coverage years in advance of Obamacare.

As First Lady her abrasive personality was a major factor in scuttling President Clinton’s ambitious health care plan, dubbed “Hillarycare” by its scores of detractors in reference to her position as head of the government task force set up to sell the program to the American people.

Former HP CEO Carly Fiorina threw her hat into the presidential ring in May, four-and-a-half years after being trounced by retiring U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer when she tried and failed to unseat the California incum- bent in 2010.  Fiorina earned an MBA in marketing at the University of Maryland, College Park, when she was 25.  She did not make the top 10 for the first GOP debate, but participated in the 7 “ineligibles’ forum.” In last week’s second Republican debate she became the 11th participant.

And now in 2015 she seems to be her own worst enemy on the campaign trail, having learned nothing from that failure or her presidential defeat at the hands of then-Sen. Barack Obama in 2008.

From email non-credibility, to allegedly coming under fire à la Brian Williams, to the fiasco in Benghazi that cost an American Ambassador his life, her stonewall claims of having done nothing wrong would do Watergate President Richard Nixon proud.

Like Hillary, on the Republican side Carly Fiorina would have us believe she should be nominated simply because she wants to run next year, and that we should disregard her inadequacies and failings either because she is a woman… or in spite of it.

What qualifies her to be President?  By virtually all accounts Fiorina drove Hewlett Packard into the ground and was fired less than six years after she became CEO in 1999.

Following that, in 2010 she was overwhelmed when she tried unsuccessfully to unseat four-term Democratic U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer in California, losing to the incumbent by more than 10 percentage points.

Last Friday, Boxer termed her former opponent a “mean-spirited… face of corporate greed,” a failed business executive more interested in enriching herself than in helping working Americans.

“We won in a landslide,” Boxer declared, “because the people of California didn’t want her to do to the country what she did to Hewlett Packard.”

And then on Sunday, on “Meet the Press,” JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon noted that while corporate executives have some attributes that would serve a U.S. President well, simply knowing how to run things and get good people involved is “not sufficient,” adding that to be an effective national and world leader, “a whole ‘nother set of attributes” is required.

Dimon supported and gave money to Hillary Clinton in 2007 and 2008 but declined to say whether he would support her again in 2016 — or even if he thought she would make a good President.

Fiorina hasn’t held a major corporate position since she was dumped by HP over a decade ago after the technology giant’s shares fell 45 percent during her tenure.

Ten men, one woman:  The second GOP presidential debate, telecast on CNN and held last Wednesday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, in Simi Valley, Calif.

But don’t let that bother you: Donald Trump-owned busi- nesses declared bankruptcy on four occasions between 1991 and 2009, three of which were related to his casino and hotel holdings in Atlantic City, although the billionaire activist tycoon/investor and reality television star proudly notes that he has never declared personal bankruptcy.

Still, according to Fox News Anchor Chris Wallace, Trump has “cost hundreds of jobs and deprived lenders of $1 billion.”

All of which, according to Trump, does not adversely impact his qualification to be President.

Nor does his penchant for playing fast and loose with facts or for ridiculing women, his most recent diatribe of which was directed squarely at Fiorina.

In 2008 the Democrats nominated Barack Obama because the party believed the electorate preferred a black man rather than a woman.

And two elections later, the President has more than proved the party right and Hillary wrong.

So how does that bode for Dr. Carson?

Surprisingly, he’s No. 2 in the GOP field, behind Trump. Yet the Republicans seem to be on the way toward nominating the unqualified TV showman — from a field of candidates so overblown that few of us can even name them all — because the majority of the electorate is sick and tired of Washington “politics as usual.”

Where oh where is there a no-nonsense American Margaret Thatcher to lift us out of the political morass that passes for presidential politics in Washington D.C.?
 
alforman@voiceofbaltimore.org